The Decay of That Colossal Wreck
by JustDefy
Summary: The story of how the Weasley family broke up. AU, in that slight changes are made in Deathly Hollows and the Epilogue is completely disregarded.


In the small town of Ottery St. Mary, just outside of Devon, England, there used to be a large and famous family that lived in a comfortable house. Large and famous, they were in many respects very old-fashioned: their family was a big family, two parents and a total of seven children, and each of their seven children grew up with the intention of finding a wife or husband and settling down somewhere and raising their own families just as their parents had done. Every six months, they and relatives from all over the world would come over to this house to celebrate Christmas or the beginning of Summer, a tradition that lasted for hundreds of years. And this they did, even in their busy lives, even in their slight impoverishment, even in times of extreme darkness.

Some would call that family the world's perfect family.

That family no longer exists.

The father and third-eldest child now spend their days in London, toiling away at their labour in the government. The eldest child likewise also spends his time in London, working for a very prestigious bank, and the second-youngest child works for the government's special forces section. The second-eldest child is off in Romania, doing research out in the field, the twins of the family are off in America, around the Silicon Valley area, expanding their company and coming up with new, innovative ideas, and the youngest child is touring the east coast of America with the rest of her sports team. This sounds like a very successful family at a first glance.

The mother is dead.

He called himself William Cohen. Of course that isn't his real name, for his father's surname isn't Cohen, nor is he Jewish. But he's heard that many prominent bankers within the Anglosphere are Jewish, and so that is his name, now.

He called himself Carol Vasilescu. He is not Romanian, but sometime during his twenty-five years living in Romania, he decided to naturalise and become one with the Romanian nation, choosing a Romanian surname very similar to his previous one.

He called himself Peter Weatherby. That isn't what many called him before, but that is what many call him now, thanks to the mistakes of two people in the past, one that called him Peter and the other that called him Mr. Weatherby.

They called themselves George and Frederick Weinfeld. Their company is rapidly becoming the premier company in their market, beating out all the competitors with their new and innovative products rolling off the shelves constantly. Many people have started to compare their company to American companies like Walmart, Microsoft, and even Standard Oil and US Steel. Of course, the British have their market cornered by the monopoly of Zonkos, so the Weinfelds have no interest of taking back the British market. Weinfeld was chosen so the alliteration can be kept in the company name.

She called herself Jennifer Prewett, Jennifer from a corruption of her first name and Prewett from her grandfather. That latter is debatable, because even though she is a athletic star and celebrity, on the side she enjoys reading poems, especially British war poems, by the likes of Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and, most importantly, Frank James Prewett.

"All this was possible because the respective governments of America, Great Britain, and Romania allows people to change their names if they wanted to do so."

That was the excuse, the shift of the blame away from themselves towards others, because each and every one of them were unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions, preferring to scurry back into their own protective bubbles, shielded from the outside world.

There were three people, of course, whom I did not name, for they didn't change their names.

The father didn't change his name, because he was simply too old and too tired of life to do so. He had tried to control his family into some resemblance of order, in the wake of darkness, in the wake of betrayal, and in the wake of death, and in the last he had failed, and he had given up any attempts after. Looking back, the father notes that the first two were handled by the mother. The motherly figure of the family was the golden thread that held the family together all these years, from Molly in this generation, to Cedrilla in the previous generation, to Julia in the generation before that, and Octavia, Maria, Joanna, and so on. Without her, the piece of cloth would fray, slowly, slowly, but surely, bits and pieces falling away, until one day the cloth is gone, the only thing that remains are thin strips of string lying on the ground, stepped on by careless strangers, a sorry end for what was once a strong and mighty sheet of cloth. The mother didn't change her name, because she is dead.

There was once a clock the family had. This clock was special, because it had six more hands than the usual number of hands an analog clock has. The nine hands represent a person out of nine in the family.

Nobody knew who was the first person to desert the family - the second- or the third-eldest child.

The third-eldest, because he was like Alois Jr. and his father Alois Sr., where the two got into such a nasty argument that the third-eldest child left the family, never to come back. Before he left the family, however, he took the old clock of the family, took off the glass cover, and ripped away the hand that had his name on it.

The second-eldest, because although he has never returned back from Romania, his hand on the clock always pointed to "home" for sixteen hours of the day out of twenty-four, and "work" otherwise. This perhaps signifies that his home is no longer in Devon, England, but perhaps somewhere in Bucharest or Cluj-Napoca, that this family is no longer his family. This was especially obvious after the summer of 1997, when all other hands pointed to "Mortal Peril" and only his alternated between normal "work" and "home". His name on his hand has also become worn and faded, until it has completely disappeared. Again, after the summer of 1997, he has never returned to England.

Both events occurred around the same day.

It was shortly after the end of the war. The one battle the twins participated in, their best friend Herr Jordan had died. Now, although they had one another, and their girlfriends Alicia and Angelina, they were always alone. Every laughing trio on the street, every pair of friends, or group of friends that came into their business to buy one of their products reminded the two of them of their own good times with Herr Jordan, now gone forever with the wind. They tried to maintain contact with Herr Potter and his two sidekicks once, and it was unbearable. The same goes with their sister and her two friends. It was only another kick in the crotch, a reminder of the innocence that the pair lost during the brutal war, never to return. The media circus constantly around them did nothing to help; it only worsened the terrible feelings of loss and regret.

It was Herr Jordan's idea to expand the business into the Americas, ever since the beginning. However, he died before his idea has a chance to be implemented, and Zonkos seems insistent on cornering the British market, which meant that the twins had to fight yet another war, one they are unwilling to fight, when they have yet to recover from the first war. Zonkos, however, seemed only interested in the British market, and the American market is still in its infancy, which made traveling across the Atlantic a very pleasing choice for the two of them, from an economic standpoint and from an emotional standpoint - a new place, of freedom, of liberty, where they will not be restrained by the bounds of the war, where they could do and go what they please within courteous societal bounds without having tabloid journalists hounding them for answers to the latest gossip, and where they are not constantly reminded of their old lives, their sorrows, the losses.

Thus they joined the many immigrants that now make up the population of the United States, like the immigrants fleeing from Ireland, Germany, and Italy during the 1848 Revolutions and subsequent war and repression, the same immigrants during the 1880s during the same era of revolutions, war, and repression in China, in Russian Poland, in the Balkans, or further on in the 1970s, the same immigrants in the wake of the end of the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Genocide, the instability in Thailand, and so on. And some, like Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie, became very successful in the United States.

However, what they left behind are family, and more likely than not, the remnants of family, torn apart by decades of hardship, of wartime, of darkness. Sometimes, they are a reason for the splitting of the family into its constituent parts, and the departure of the young men and women are only an accelerant for the process of nuclear fission.

I mentioned Herr Potter and his two sidekicks previously. They are the second-youngest child of the family and a female friend of his, Hermione. For over an year, the two of them have been dating each other, and the male in the relationship wanted to go even further. However, Hermione did not feel that she was ready. There was a heated argument, which escalated into a brawl between the two of them and ended with Hermione storming out of the house and breaking the engagement off. The next morning, all traces of Hermione were gone, but not before the Daily Prophet printed out a giant article talking about how the second-youngest child of the family ditched the rest of the trio in their quest to defeat the powers of evil for two and a half straight whole months, when the team needed them the most. Of course, nobody had known about this fact previously, except for the three of them and a few others who either were dead or couldn't care less.

The revelation of this fact, plus the disappearance of Hermione, one of the best friends of the daughter of the family, lead to yet another bitter argument within the family. The end result was yet another bloodbath - the relationship between Herr Potter and the daughter were broken off, and all three left the house in Devon, never to return, and never to see each other eye-to-eye on the same level again. In the process, somebody had thrown the clock against the wall, and it was irreparably broken. The 8 hands, plus two for Herr Potter and Hermione, fell out of the broken clock, one by one, landing on the ground in utter defeat.

Herr Potter asked the Ministry if there were any tasks on the Continent. Of course, there were, and so he disappeared into France, into Germany, into Spain, and Italy, tracking down those deemed a threat to society. The other male asked the same, except in Ireland. And likewise, he disappeared, searching the Irish countryside, the pubs in Cork, in Münster, the public forums in Dublin, for those deemed a threat to society. And the female of the three decided to pursue her goals in the game of Quidditch, starting again on the east coast of the United States of America.

The night the three disappeared, there was a house fire. The father was working overnight at the Ministry, and the mother was sleeping. It is sufficient to say that the entire house, that for generations upon generations was home to a strong nuclear family, is burnt to ashes. The father moved in with his son in Cornwall, but soon decided to relocate to London, where he would be closer to his work.

The former boyfriend of Hermione had wanted to apologise to her, and never got the chance to. This is why he never changed his name - he wanted to find her, so he could properly apologise to her, and possibly begin the relationship again. It has been more than 12 years now, and he still has not found her yet.

In each case, none were able to admit that they were at fault in splitting their family apart, that each of them contributed to the cause equally, that they can and should forgive others. And therefore, in the end, the family of the great pure-blooded Weasleys is no more.

All there is right now in the wreck in Ottery St. Mary in Devon, England is a large sign, placed by three French brothers, Monsieurs Henri, Renaud, and Jean Granger, who came across this sight randomly one day while traveling abroad in the UK. This is slightly ironic and slightly fitting, because any onomastician can take a look at the names of the brothers and see its significance. The sign on one side bears a French translation of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. On the other side is that same poem in English:

 _I met a traveller from an antique land_

 _Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone_

 _Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,_

 _Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,_

 _And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,_

 _Tell that its sculptor well those passions read_

 _Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,_

 _The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:_

 _And on the pedestal these words appear:_

 _'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:_

 _Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'_

 _Nothing beside remains. Round the decay_

 _Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare_

 _The lone and level sands stretch far away."_


End file.
